Giving It All Away

October began well for me. I felt much more energetic and optimistic than I did during September. No idea why. Not examining it. Just taking advantage of it. I suspect the beautiful sunshine and clear blue skies had a lot to do with it, as I find that very mood-enhancing.

And in that spirit, last weekend I thought to myself “Right, I’m going to step up the blogging again. Get back into the habit. I think I’ll aim for a blog post every day, Monday to Friday.”

Happily I had already cleared one day, intending to be out of London on Tuesday, and then had a better idea about how to achieve my goal for that day at a cost of £1.71 rather than spending about twelve hours on the road, however nice parts of that day would have been. A drive to the country and back.

So I thought I’d write five blog posts on Tuesday instead. I only managed four in the end but that does mean I have published one every weekday so far in this month which has me back on track and loving it.

However, I forgot something very crucial. I forgot to ask people to help me by sharing. I was giving it all away.

I drew up a plan over the weekend to not only blog every day but invite people to join my newsletter list, and help us to grow our listenership of the podcast, remind people that if we’ve never spoken then can book themselves into my diary for an exploratory chat, share with them the informative audios I’ve created in the past, flash them my shiny testimonials by way of social proof, and suggest people might like to book a session and pay what they want by donation. And people did that. They opted-in and they booked and donated. Yay!

My plan was to rotate these ideas daily across the week, after sharing lots of content. After giving it all away.

The only crucial thing I forgot was to ask people to share the content. Eejit moi.

A client reminded me about this by telling me she’d written a blog post to promote a series of events. This blog post was part of the publicity which would benefit her and the other participants. Nobody had shared it. What should she do?

I replied: “Re getting people to share stuff, always tell both Twitter and Facebook what you want readers to do and you will be amazed. Pls RT in the tweet and please share in the Facebook post and people will do that. Also I would directly and personally ask the other participants to do that. And if you have connected with their social media profiles and can @ them on Twitter or link to their name in blue on FB that usually elicits a retweet/share at the very least. People are often very overwhelmed and busy and need to be encouraged and reminded to see the bigger picture, i.e. if the events do well, so do they.”

And that made me realise that I’d started my own enhanced campaign to get more of what I want into my life and biz via social media where I give a lot away, including my best stuff, but that I so often fail to follow my own advice and ask people to share and RT. Duh.

A useful book on this topic is Gary Vaynerchuck’s Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. I can save you reading it by explaining the boxing analogy. What it means is Give, Give, Give, Sell. Or Give, Give, Give, Ask For What You Want in Return. And that’s only reciprocal.

If you ask, people will give to you too by sharing. So easy for them to do, just as easy to click Share as it is to click Like.

It is abundant to give, give, give.

It is scarce not to ask for anything in return.

It is lop-sided too. Remember how much we all love to give. Don’t deprive us of that opportunity of giving to you. We love to help, us Nice Girls. All you have to do is ask.

Then I realised I could make it my business to intentionally share something of my clients’ social media output every day, whether or not they ask, and even more than I naturally do already. What fun!